Vincent van Gogh (March 30, 1853, Zundert-July 29, 1890) was a Dutch draughtsman and painter, classified as a Post-Impressionist.
His paintings and drawings include some of the world's best known, most popular and most expensive pieces.
The fact that he cut off part of his left ear is very well known, as is the belief that he was driven to an early suicide by
lack of recognition of his genius. Here reality and myth are intertwined, and although he certainly suffered from recurrent
bouts of mental illness, his suicide was preceded by growing praise for his work from radical critics and fellow avant-garde
artists-something which paradoxically caused the painter considerable anguish.
Van Gogh spent his early life as an art dealer, teacher and preacher in England, Holland and Belgium. His period as an
artist began in 1880 and lasted for a decade, initially with work in sombre colours, until an encounter in Paris with
Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism accelerated his artistic development. He produced all of his work, some 900 paintings
and 1100 drawings, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known work was produced in the final two years
of his life, and in the two months before his death he painted 90 pictures. Following his death, his fame grew slowly,
helped by the devoted promotion of it by his widowed sister-in-law.
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